Socket.IO vs Nchan

Overview

Socket.IO

Stacks13.6K

Followers11.0K

Votes776

Nchan

Stacks126

Followers19

Votes0

GitHub Stars3.1K

Forks294

Nchan vs Socket.IO: What are the differences?

What is Nchan? A scalable, flexible pub/sub server for the modern web. It is built as a module for the Nginx web server. It can be configured as a standalone server, or as a shim between your application and hundreds, thousands, or millions of live subscribers. It can buffer messages in memory, on-disk, or via Redis.

What is Socket.IO? Realtime application framework (Node.JS server). Socket.IO enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.

Nchan and Socket.IO belong to "Realtime Backend / API" category of the tech stack.

Some of the features offered by Nchan are:

flexible pub/sub server
Horizontally scalable (using Redis)
Subscribe to hundreds of channels over a single subscriber connection.

On the other hand, Socket.IO provides the following key features:

Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.
Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.
Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.

Nchan and Socket.IO are both open source tools. It seems that Socket.IO with 47.1K GitHub stars and 8.59K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Nchan with 2.35K GitHub stars and 243 GitHub forks.

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Advice on Socket.IO, Nchan

Noam

Jul 16, 2020

Needs adviceon

Node.js

ExpressJS

React

We are starting to work on a web-based platform aiming to connect artists (clients) and professional freelancers (service providers). In-app, timeline-based, real-time communication between users (& storing it), file transfers, and push notifications are essential core features. We are considering using Node.js, ExpressJS, React, MongoDB stack with Socket.IO & Apollo, or maybe using Real-Time Database and functionalities of Firebase.

1.15M views1.15M

Comments

Anil

Mar 7, 2020

Needs advice

I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this? I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this?I want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real-time chatting, for that, I have to draw a UML and ufd diagram flow then I have to implement it in my code, my stack is node js, android, express, MongoDB, Redis. how can I do this?i want to add uWebSockets.js in my application for real time chatting, for that i have to draw a uml and ufd diagram flow then i have to implement it in my code , my stack is node js , android , express , mongoDb, redis . how can i do a this?

46.7k views46.7k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Socket.IO	Nchan
It enables real-time bidirectional event-based communication. It works on every platform, browser or device, focusing equally on reliability and speed.	It is built as a module for the Nginx web server. It can be configured as a standalone server, or as a shim between your application and hundreds, thousands, or millions of live subscribers. It can buffer messages in memory, on-disk, or via Redis.
Real-time analytics - Push data to clients that gets represented as real-time counters, charts or logs.;Binary streaming - Starting in 1.0, it's possible to send any blob back and forth: image, audio, video.;Instant messaging and chat - Socket.IO's "Hello world" is a chat app in just a few lines of code.;Document collaboration - Allow users to concurrently edit a document and see each other's changes.	flexible pub/sub server; Horizontally scalable (using Redis); Subscribe to hundreds of channels over a single subscriber connection.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 3.1K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 294
Stacks 13.6K	Stacks 126
Followers 11.0K	Followers 19
Votes 776	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 219 Real-time 143 Node.js 141 Event-based communication 102 WebSockets 102 Open source Cons 12 Bad documentation 4 Githubs that complement it are mostly deprecated 3 Doesn't work on React Native 2 Websocket Errors 2 Small community	No community feedback yet
Integrations
Auth0 Gatsby Flutter React Backbone.js Cloud Firestore Outbrain	NGINX Python Redis

What are some alternatives to Socket.IO, Nchan?

Firebase

Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.

PubNub

PubNub makes it easy for you to add real-time capabilities to your apps, without worrying about the infrastructure. Build apps that allow your users to engage in real-time across mobile, browser, desktop and server.

Pusher

Pusher is the category leader in delightful APIs for app developers building communication and collaboration features.

SignalR

SignalR allows bi-directional communication between server and client. Servers can now push content to connected clients instantly as it becomes available. SignalR supports Web Sockets, and falls back to other compatible techniques for older browsers. SignalR includes APIs for connection management (for instance, connect and disconnect events), grouping connections, and authorization.

Ably

Ably offers WebSockets, stream resume, history, presence, and managed third-party integrations to make it simple to build, extend, and deliver digital realtime experiences at scale.

Syncano

Syncano is a backend platform to build powerful real-time apps more efficiently. Integrate with any API, minimize boilerplate code and control your data - all from one place.

NATS

Unlike traditional enterprise messaging systems, NATS has an always-on dial tone that does whatever it takes to remain available. This forms a great base for building modern, reliable, and scalable cloud and distributed systems.

SocketCluster

SocketCluster is a fast, highly scalable HTTP + realtime server engine which lets you build multi-process realtime servers that make use of all CPU cores on a machine/instance. It removes the limitations of having to run your Node.js server as a single thread and makes your backend resilient by automatically recovering from worker crashes and aggregating errors into a central log.

deepstream.io

Scalable Server for Realtime Web Apps with JSON structures that can be read, manipulated and listened to, messages that can be sent to one or more subscribers, and request response workflows, between two clients or servers.

8base

A cloud service designed to power enterprise-grade web and mobile applications that require support for large numbers of users, complex data and transactional requirements, comprehensive role-based security and a modern look-and-feel.